Where some see sadness and destruction in a burned forest, Canmore artist Barb Fyvie sees a complex, challenging landscape that is, in fact, a place of beauty.
Her most recent body of work – The Silver Forest, which will be on display at The Edge Gallery as part of its upcoming exhibition Out of the Woods – delves into the charred landscape of Kootenay National Park, burned at various times in the past decade.
Fyvie is known for her snow-covered trees those “fluffy, full-bodied trees,” as she describes them, that speak of the solitude and joy found in deep snow, deep in the forest. But in The Silver Forest Fyvie explores a subject she discovered only a few years ago.
“A few years ago we went and explored these areas in the burns and that became my new obsession, and it is such a graphic landscape for me; it offers up challenges, because it has fabulous palettes. It’s a really cool place because it is so different on different days,” she said.
“It can be really somber on an overcast day and it can feel, not morbid, but sad. It’s a sad place and then when the sun comes out, it transforms it. It’s like a tapestry of these vertical neutrals against these blue shadows going horizontally against the golden slope. It’s really a fabulous, amazing visual.”
While the burned forest initially inspired her esthetically, she also discovered an emotional connection to that place: a place that is “quiet and peaceful” and a place of reverence where few people go.
“And so part of it, what makes it interesting for me to be in these places, is to share that place with other people,” she said.
Unlike her other work, which immediately draws in the eye with the peaceful setting complemented by Fyvie’s rich colours and sense of composition, The Silver Forest is at first more challenging to appreciate.
Each painting is filled with lines: from the vertical lines of the dead, silver trees stretching back into the distance to horizontal shadows that run undulating crosswise across the snow.
But spend time with the paintings and it soon becomes apparent that, while out of the norm for landscape, they are equally beautiful.
“It’s quite thought provoking for other people. They’re not ready for it usually and with a lot of landscape painters they’re looking for beauty and they’re looking to convey maybe a more mainstream view of beauty and what beauty is. We are surrounded by paradise … I do get a mixed response, but what I find intriguing with my work is the longer people sit with it, the more they are really taken by the piece,” Fyvie said.
“It makes you think about mortality and the cycles. It’s all beautiful; the whole cycle of life is beautiful.”
Along with Fyvie’s 18 paintings, Out of the Woods also showcases the work of Grande Prairie sculptor Grant Berg. Berg carves flowing shapes that express the spirit of a particular tree and his connection to the land. He uses marble, serpentine, chlorite, antler, rundlestone and salvaged brick.
Out of the Woods opens Saturday (Nov. 23) from 2-5 p.m. presenting a dual perspective of Canada’s forests.
